City is racing for 127 street solution ahead of weekend provincial deadline

City council is taking another shot at convincing the province to keep 127 street open at the southern leg of the Anthony Henday. What’s being proposed to the Notley government is to have the city take over operation and maintenance for the rest of the decade, because that road, and 135 street will be needed to access a future Park’n’ride.

“If the park’n’ride is going to open in 20, this roads got to be ready in the fall of ’19,” Coun. Bryan Anderson said. It’s his emergency motion that was made last week at executive committee to approach the province to beat the deadline of this weekend that would see 127 st closed.

The province cited safety as a reason to close it. However they quoted stats that are six times worse than they really are.

Anderson said an area MLA is giving one set of stats, and his office another. “So their figure of 30-40 is right. It’s just not annual.”

“It’s an overemphasis using safety issues to conceivably close a road that didn’t necessarily want to upgrade or maintain.”

A new proposal will be sent in a letter from the Mayors office. “We’re going to change that now because the interchange could be $105-120 million. But the in and out roads and the development of 135 st to Ellerslie might only be ten per cent of that.”

“We could move money around to actually build that if the province will give us the land, and maybe we can offer to operate and maintain 127th for the number of years that are going to occur before we get 135 open.”

“We can’t widen Ellerslie. The province is saying, ‘well people can take Ellerslie and go all the way to Rabbit Hill instead of up 127.’ It’s only two lanes. Plus there’s a bridge that has to be upgraded.”

The Park’n’ride will be needed by 2020 at Ellerslie and 135 when the lease at Century Park LRT runs out. Anderson said southwest Edmonton is plagued by traffic delays because there are insufficient north and south roads in the area.